Apex issue that took out 1/2 my tank
- Thread starter Brian283
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areefer01
2500 Club Member
Neptune does not "auto" push firmware updates. It has to be done manually by the hobbyist. If that is what your maintenance person believes then I would recommend finding another one.
KStatefan
2500 Club Member
Still do not think the root cause has been determined though. If it was due to the filter sock the heater should have shut off when she changed the sock and not required you to turn the socket off.
Lionfish hunter
Valuable Member
My dos qd drained my tank(set to auto water change) causing 20 gallons of freshwater to dump in from the full to the top ato. I took a video of the pump running full speed with the fusion showing the pump off and my virtual outlet to shut it off tripped. Apex acknowledged there was an issue and it was eventually sorted out. I asked for power supply’s for the dos’s so I wouldn’t have to worry about this issue by plugging it in and have the power bar shut it off in a disaster. They told me that I could buy my own. Their support is always good but having something happen like this(that is completely unacceptable and should never happen) They should have given me a couple power supplies.Evening fellow Reefers,
I wanted to ask a question about my Apex controller and a recent event where my temperature dropped heater stayed on till it reached 90 degrees.
I have a Red Sea G2. 65 gallon display and 20 gallon sump. I changed out my glass heater 2 months ago as it was approaching 12 months old. I replaced it with a BRS Titanium 350w heater. Everything was working great until last Thursday.
I have the Apex programmed to keep the temperature between 77.5 and 79.0 degrees. Heater is plugged into the Apex Power bar and controller turns the heater on and off as needed. I haven’t had any issues with the Apex system for over 10 months.
I travel a lot for work and last week I was in Europe. I came out of a meeting and saw I had a major temperature swing in the last 12 hours. The swing was 73.5 to 90.2 degrees. I turned the heater off using the Apex app on my phone. One challenge was it was 2 Am in the States so didn’t call my wife that early.
Over the next few hours I watched the temperature slowly drop down and at 6 am I called my wife. She went and looked at the tank, two fish were already dead along with a fire shrimp. Tank was cloudy. LPS were stressed.
My wife called our local Reef store who maintains my tank and he was able to come over that afternoon between servicing other customers tanks.
He put a new large bag of carbon in the sock as he could tell all the corals were very stressed. He recommended waiting 24-48 hours before doing a water change as everything was already stressed enough. And changing the carbon bag every 24 hours for the next few days.
I returned home Saturday afternoon and did a 15 gallon water change. Changed out the carbon.
I lost 2 large SPS colonies, 7 SPS frags, large frogspun , 2 hammers and all the remaining corals both SPS and LPS show signs of stress and now STN.
Apex seems to be working fine currently. But my reef maintenance guy is guessing that Apex could have pushed a software patch as they are normally sent at night. Patch could have temporarily caused my heaters to not turn off once the water temperature reached 79.0 as per the setting I have it on.
Two most frustrating things about this is, I had just turned the corner and with my reef shops help, my tank was doing fantastic for the last 4-5 months. I finally had the Nitrate / phos ratio where we wanted it and the doser was dialed in, corals were going great. Second frustration is I lost about $750 in corals and fish. I don’t know exactly why.
I have already submitted a trouble ticket to Apex. I would like to know what they can see in their system and if they know what the happened.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Thanks
Brian
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Is that like Canadian Bacon?
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The temp probe was reading ambient in the house, as it became uncovered.
Which brings me to the next point, the probe and heater should always be in the same compartment with the probe just upstream of the heater and situated so that it can never run dry (probe or heater).
CHSUB
Active Member
As Kstatefan says. The probe at some point is reading reef temp, because his wife cleaned socks and at this point Apex should turn heat off but he did when noticing high temp.
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Look at the graph forensically please.
With the probe out of the water in in ambient air the tank heated runaway, to 90F because the probe was reading ambient of 65. As it dried and the air around it raised in temp due to the heater overheating the tank, you can see it gradually rise to a little over 70 (90F water near it). At some point it becomes submerged again and INSTANTLY reads 90F. OP gets alarm and shuts off the power outlet assigned to it, but it was ALREADY off, as the single peak shows that the moment the controller saw 90F it started to cool...
CHSUB
Active Member
Yes, however op seems to think he turned heater off with his phone manually, but your explanation seems more plausible.
Look at the graph forensically please.
With the probe out of the water in in ambient air the tank heated runaway, to 90F because the probe was reading ambient of 65. As it dried and the air around it raised in temp due to the heater overheating the tank, you can see it gradually rise to a little over 70 (90F water near it). At some point it becomes submerged again and INSTANTLY reads 90F. OP gets alarm and shuts off the power outlet assigned to it, but it was ALREADY off, as the single peak shows that the moment the controller saw 90F it started to cool...
Seems like user error but the way to fix this is to run a heater that has its own thermostat so that both would have to fail in the ON.
An Inkbird wouldn't help if the probe was also not submerged (assuming the compartment got low).
An Inkbird wouldn't help if the probe was also not submerged (assuming the compartment got low).
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Yes, he saw the temp and likely manually set the control to off or disabled even though it was already shut down, not understanding what was happening until days later.
Data can be very revealing if you look at it with an open mind and try to understand how it was created.
This has been a good reminder for me to spend this weekend looking at how I have my heater thermostat, probes, inkbirds, and apex setup. I haven’t done all I can to prevent this situation.
I have Apex on all my 3 systems, recently playing with Hydros. Regardless of aquarium controllers, I use them for monitoring and fail-safe mechanism but never for controlling on/off operations. My heaters have their own controllers and similarly, the calcium reactors will not overdose since that is separately controlled. However, if Alk gets above a certain threshold (unlikely) the Apex will kill the power to the CO2 solenoid. Basically, I use the Apex as a backup solution.
Having said that — I’ve observed 2 separate occasions where the Apex went down completely due to a dirty WAV (drawing too much power) and failed Trident. Both devices were connected to the 24v ports. It’s a shame — I would expect the Apex to let me know or disable the port. Instead, it died completely and I had to unplug all devices and identified the issue via process of elimination. Luckily for me, I had an MP40, not on Apex, that kept on running. The MP40 is also on UPS.
In short, always have redundancy for critical components.
Having said that — I’ve observed 2 separate occasions where the Apex went down completely due to a dirty WAV (drawing too much power) and failed Trident. Both devices were connected to the 24v ports. It’s a shame — I would expect the Apex to let me know or disable the port. Instead, it died completely and I had to unplug all devices and identified the issue via process of elimination. Luckily for me, I had an MP40, not on Apex, that kept on running. The MP40 is also on UPS.
In short, always have redundancy for critical components.
iReefer12
Well-Known Member
Brian, add another line of code into the heater, so if the temp drops below 75, the heater shuts off, I have this just in case the probe was to ever come out of the water.
(The temp should never be below 75 really, if it got there, the heater is either dead, or the probes out of the water)
If Tmp < 75.0 Then OFF
aquadise
Community Member
Temperature is the most important factor. I never let one devices to control the temp of my tank. I usually have 1 back up for each other.
In my tank, i set up a separated controller to control only the temp. I set my Apex to monitor the temp, to alarm, and not control. I have another temp controller, which is a minor function of my Kamoer X5S.
In my tank, i set up a separated controller to control only the temp. I set my Apex to monitor the temp, to alarm, and not control. I have another temp controller, which is a minor function of my Kamoer X5S.
Northern Flicker
Valuable Member
You run a single 300W on a 250g system with a temp differential of 14dF?
That math does not work homie.
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